Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Page 38

  “It’s a pity you can’t stay and teach me more.”

  Urban put a hand on Withers’s shoulder. “Our cook needs a steady hand to keep him in the right path. Besides, you’re not going to be doing much of any walking for some time. And when you do, I suspect you’ll have Talen here to watch your back.”

  Withers rubbed his bony hands. “We’ll come back for her. A year’s enough time.”

  Urban looked at her earnestly. “Maybe in a year, you’ll reconsider.” His look turned mischievous. “But you still owe me for that black eye. I think a kiss for finding you is appropriate.”

  Talen’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly.

  “Anything for the man who saved me and my brother,” she said. Then she stepped past Urban and gave Soddam a peck on the cheek.

  Soddam laughed. Urban shook his head, then took Sugar’s hand. “To one of the best ferrets I think we’ve ever had. Be safe.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “Farewell, Purity’s daughter. You would have made our ship lively.” Then he too kissed her hand.

  “Come now,” the Mistress called out. “Leave his dishyness to those of us with the experience to handle him.”

  They all turned to see her walking up the hill toward them.

  Urban said, “I believe I’m in peril.”

  The Mistress huffed, gave Urban the eye, then sized Soddam up appreciatively. “Now there’s the figure of a man.”

  Soddam cleared his throat. “We do have an extra bed on our ship.”

  “Are you asking me something, my large fellow?”

  “Just stating a fact.”

  “Tempting,” she said. “But you’re going to have to try harder than that. Unfortunately, I’m here to fetch Sugar and Talen. Lord Shim wants to hold a meeting.”

  * * *

  Talen sat in the meeting held upon a knoll apart from the camp. Uncle Argoth and Aunt Serah were there as well as Shim, Matiga, Eresh, Sugar, Legs, and Nettle. River would have been there, but she was already with the Spiderhawk woodikin queen.

  Commander Eresh spoke first. “Back on the coast, the rivers, for a good many miles inland, are not safe. The Bone Faces control the land, the waters, and the skies. I’ve never seen anything like it. We won’t be going back there anytime soon. Nor would we want to. I think there will be a war unlike any we’ve seen between the Bone Faces and the Western Glorydoms.”

  “We need more lore,” the Creek Widow said. “I think it’s time we try to open the Book again.”

  Uncle Argoth shook his head. The whole side of his face was dark with a huge bruise. “We can’t afford to lose any one of us in an experiment.”

  The silence stretched long, and then Talen spoke. “Maybe we’ll be able to open the book in the future, but I think I have a more immediate solution.”

  All the eyes turned on him.

  “If we need lore, why don’t we take it from those who possess it?”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” asked Eresh.

  “I can free a thrall from its master,” he said. “So why don’t we free a few Divines? We’ll put our own thralls upon the ones we catch, and then we’ll make them share every last bit of knowledge locked up in their brains.”

  Eresh’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He grunted.

  Shim said, “We can do that?”

  A smile crept across Uncle Argoth’s bruised face. “We know how to make thralls. If the boy can wrest an urgom from a Skir Master, I’m sure he can sever what links a Divine.”

  Eresh said, “That boy’s smart, which is surprising, seeing he’s related to you.”

  Argoth looked at the Creek Widow. “Why didn’t you leave him on the other side of the mountains?”

  “Because she couldn’t resist me,” Eresh said.

  The Creek Widow shook her head and smiled.

  “Here’s my question,” Eresh said. “Why limit ourselves to Divines? A couple of those earth monsters might come in handy. Why don’t we see if we can’t free a few Kragows from such a load?”

  Now it was Talen’s turn to be put on his heels. He really didn’t want to face another one of those. “I don’t think normal thralls will work on them.”

  Eresh said, “We won’t know that, my boy, until we’ve tried.”

  The Creek Widow said, “This is all fine and good. But we have thousands to feed. Hunting Divines will provoke retaliation. You’ll be hounded and chased by dogmen and Guardians and whatever else they can bring to bear. Do that now, and we risk everyone down in those camps. We need to make sure our people are safe and secure before we begin such things.”

  “Agreed,” said Shim.

  “Agreed,” all the others said.

  “We’ll find a place and overwinter,” Argoth said, his eyes glinting with purpose. “Maybe move again. We’ll look at the Book to see if it can be opened. And then we go hunting.”

  The next day, the people of Shim and the few woodikin the queen had assigned to travel with them struck camp and moved out. Scouts on horses rode out to find the next camping site and water. Others were assigned to find food. Still others ranged miles behind and on the flanks of the host to watch for enemies.

  Just as they were about to depart, Talen found Sugar and Legs. They chatted for a few minutes, verifying they had everything packed. Nettle soon joined them. And then they set out as the lines of people moved forward. The multitude was told to spread out so as not to wear too heavily on the land. And so they traveled in small groups and would continue to travel this way for a number of days, hoping to obscure their path.

  They traveled twenty miles that day. They traveled thirty the next and the next. Talen sent his roamlings behind to watch their rear, but every time he did, he found the land empty.

  As they walked, people came to him to be raveled. He still felt the hunger inside of him, strong as ever. Every time he got close to a living thing, he longed for the Fire and soul. But now that he knew what that hunger was, what he was, it didn’t frighten him. Not as it had before.

  He was part Devourer, yes, but he was also human down to his bones. And the man would be the master. It must be, for when the moment of crisis came, when he and the others took the fight to the enemy, he was determined not to be a scourge, not the curse of a dark god, but a blessing.

  * * *

  Weeks later, a dog padded into the temporary camp on the other side of the Wilds. It had a salt and peppered brown coat. One eye was blue, the other brown. Two hooded crows flew in with it.

  The dog sniffed the fading scent of many humans. There wasn’t much scent left, but there was enough. The dog and crows were hungry. Together they caught and killed a fat snake. When they’d finished eating it, the dog padded out of the old camp and followed the scent that led into the vast waste beyond. The crows squabbled over the last bits of skin, then sprang to the air and followed.

  The End

  Dear Reader

  I HOPE YOU enjoyed Raveler. If you did, please consider leaving a review at Amazon or another favorite bookseller’s website. Even if it’s only a line or two, taking just a moment to share a hearty huzzah can make a huge difference in helping ye doughty author hook up with fellow readers looking for good books.

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  Terms & People

  Political Hierarchy

  While there are many variations, the basic power hierarchy in the realms of the Western Glorydoms flows from the Glory down:

&n
bsp; Glory

  |

  Lesser Divines

  |

  Territory Lords and Warlords

  |

  District Lords and Village Bailiffs

  There are still some small areas of the known world ruled by barbarian kings or chieftains, but almost all these pay tribute to one Glory or another in the form of treasure, slaves, or Fire. The major western glorydoms include Kish, Koram, Mokad, Mungo, Nilliam, and Urz.

  The Six Orders of the Divine

  Fire Wizards

  Kains

  Skir Masters

  Guardians

  Green Ones

  Glories

  Infamous Divines include: The Goat King, The Witch of Cath, and Hismayas, the ancient lord of the sleth.

  Major Mokaddian Clans with holdings in the New Lands

  Birak

  Burund

  Fir-Noy

  Harkon

  Jarund

  Mithrosh

  Seema

  Shoka

  Vargon

  Koramites

  Hogan

  River

  Ke

  Talen

  Sparrow & Purity

  Sugar

  Legs

  Harnock

  Mokaddians

  Argoth & Serah

  Nettle

  The Creek Widow (Matiga)

  Lumen (The missing Divine of the New Lands)

  Rubaloth (Skir Master of Mokad)

  Rose (Sister to Argoth, wife of Hogan the Koramite)

  Shim (Warlord of the Shoka clan)

  Armsman

  Every clan has various martial orders within it. The ranks of the vast majority of these orders are filled with those who are not full-time soldiers, but farmers, laborers, and craftsmen. However, there are orders in some clans of elite and sometimes professional soldiers. These are the orders of the armsmen.

  Bone Faces

  Barbarian raiders from the South who have begun striking Mokaddian holdings by sea.

  Dreadmen and Fell-maidens

  Those without lore who are endowed by Divines with weaves of might. When such weaves are worn, they multiply the wearer’s natural mental and physical abilities. However, the weaves carry a cost: worn too frequently, the body wastes, consuming itself to fuel the magic.

  Escrum

  A weave that binds the wearer to a master, allowing communication over long distances.

  Frights

  Not completely of the world of flesh, frights feed on Fire. They most often prey on the sick and dying, attaching themselves like great leeches.

  Godsweed

  An herb with properties said to repel some creatures such as frights and the souls of the dead. The smoke from one thin braid can rid a house of an infestation for many weeks. But its effect does not discriminate between frights, ancestors, or even the servants of the Creators. Hence the saying: take care to appease those you’ve chased with smoke.

  King’s Collar

  A weave wrought by a special order of Divines called Kains. Such collars not only prevent a person from working magic, but also weaken the wearer, making those captured easier to handle.

  Kragow

  A weilder of the strange lore of the Bone Faces.

  Military Units

  A fist is made up of 8-12 soldiers. A hammer contains 2-4 fists. A terror contains 4-6 hammers. The leaders of these units are called fistmen, hammermen, and terrormen. A cohort contains 4-6 terrors.

  Skir

  Orders of beings that inhabit the heavens as well as the deep places of the earth and sea. While invisible to the naked eye, many do exert power in the visible world and can be harnessed by those knowing the secrets. But not all are useful to man. Many orders of smaller Skir are deemed insignificant, while other powers are so dreadful none dare summon them.

  Stone-wights

  A vanished race whose ruins are found in the New Lands. Some claim plague or war took them. Others find evidence they were destroyed by the Six themselves.

  The Six

  Seven creators fashioned the earth and all life therein. However, upon seeing the flaws in what he and the other six Creators had wrought, the seventh, called Regret, wanted to destroy the work and begin again. The remaining Six, whose names are sacred, refused, but they were not able to overcome Regret. And so it is that the powers of both creation and dissolution still struggle on the earth.

  Sleth

  Another term for “soul-eaters.” In Urzarian tongue it literally means “The East Wind,” which dries and kills life. Applied to those who, in rebellion of the Glories, use an unsanctioned form of the lore of the Divines. They are beings and orders of beings supposedly twisted by their polluted draws. Said to have gotten their lore from Regret, one of the seven Creators who, having once seen the creation, realized its flaws and wanted to destroy it.

  The Three Vitalities

  All life is made up of one or more of the three vital powers. There are many names for these life forces. The most common terms in the western glorydoms are Fire (sometimes called Spirit), Body, and Soul. There are rumors, among those who know the lore, of lost vitalities: powers that have passed out of human ken.

  Weaves

  Objects of power. Some can only be quickened and handled by lore masters. Others, wild weaves, are independent of a master and can be used by those who do not possess any lore. Weaves may be made of almost any material; however, gold is used most often for the wild weaves given to dreadmen.

  Woodikin

  Creatures that live in great families beyond the gap in the wilds of the New Lands. About half the size of a man, they are ferocious and spilled much blood in the battles fought with the early settlers. Although rare, single woodikin are sometimes seen in human lands.

  Acknowledgements

  For excellent feedback on the manuscripts, I thank Caitlin Blasdell, Dan Wells, Darren Eggett, David Hartwell, David Walton, Garrett Winn, Hannah Bowman, John Williams, Kassandra Brown, Larry Correia, Mette Harrison, Stacy Hague-Hill, Stephen and Liesl Nelson, and Steve Diamond. A huge thanks goes to Alex and Amy Lamborn who were extra helpful with each iteration of the story.

  Donald Siano provided expert insight in calculating projectile velocities of medieval trebuchets. (Yes, sometimes I find it important and helpful to think about such fascinating details.) And Stephen Morillo was generous enough to help me put myself in the saddle and on the front line of a medieval cavalry charge.

  As for the art, Victor Minguez provided an awesome illustration of Matiga and the fell-maidens. And Devon Dorrity did a wonderful job on the cover.

  Above all, my thanks goes to my wife Nellie who played the roles of reader, editor, listening ear (when this project ran into some heavy weather), and business manager.

  By John D. Brown

  Thrillers

  Bad Penny

  Awful Intent (coming soon!)

  Epic Fantasies

  Servant: The Dark God Book One

  Curse: The Dark God Book Two

  Raveler: The Dark God Book Three

  Shorter Works

  Bright Waters

  From the Clay of His Heart

  Loose in the Wires

  The Scent of Desire

  Find more information at johndbrown.com. While you’re there, you may also want to join the many readers who have asked to be notified about John’s new release sales and other good stuff.

  About the Author

  JOHN D. BROWN IS an award-winning short story writer and novelist. He lives with his wife and four daughters in the hinterlands of Utah where one encounters much fresh air, many good-hearted ranchers, and the occasional wolf.

  John is active on his website johndbrown.com where he reviews and writes a
bout whatever takes his fancy. Feel free to drop by to post comments or contact him directly. He always enjoys hearing from his readers.

  RAVELER: The Dark God Book Three

  Copyright © 2014 by John Brown

  All rights reserved

  Published by Blacksword Enterprises, LLC

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from John Brown. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Illustration copyright © 2014 Victor Minguez

  Map copyright © 2008 Isaac Stewart

  Cover design by Mythic Studios

  ISBN 13: 978-1-940427-11-9

  ISBN 10: 1940427118

  First edition: August, 2014